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Monthly Archives: October 2012

We have very few hours in a day. Our country would be way more developed if only we had more hours in a day. Elifansi, the boda rider would transport more people. Badru, the taxi driver would do more routes. Kasadha, the guy who now runs Sula’s rolex business, would spin more rolexes. Bebe Cool, well he would get into more fights. J. Musisi would shake-up Kampala some more. Don’t miss that pun…I took off a few months to come up with it. Potholes would grow smaller. Doctors would treat more patients. Uganda would definitely be better. 24 hours are the main reason we are still a third world nation fifty years later.

Rather than sit and complain till the malnourished cows and the scrawny chicken come home, I took time off my very relaxed schedule to share with you techniques my research has revealed will definitely save you time and in essence lengthen your day. I’m not practicing all of them but if you succeed, let me know how. Save time by:

Eat while driving to work
The average human being who has never been to the army will spend 20 minutes having breakfast. So much time wasted. Pick up that gonja, pack the juice in those cool packs they sell in supermarkets and feast away as you dodge potholes and make angry faces at other drivers. Save time. Eat. Drive. Uganda needs this to develop

Shower fully once a week
We all know that Lake Victoria once almost dried up before our very own eyes. We cried foul. Summoned the gods. Did the rain dance. Swam in mud. Ate beetroot. Drank soda. We did everything to arrest the situation. We could have saved ourselves this unnecessary heartache by bathing less.

The average human, research shows, showers seven times a week. Those who shower more are considered amphibians and those who do so less are taxi conductors. If, on average, one takes seven minutes in a shower, that’s almost an entire hour lost every week. What can you do for your country, your motherland, your nation, in an hour?

I’ll start this piece by taking on the voice a seasoned writer with global acclaim and many international awards (Caine Prize, Caining Prize) and using the definition of a word;

Addiction(noun)-the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. Origin: 1595–1605; < Latin addiction- (stem of addictio ) a giving over, surrender.

I’ll proceed, still using that writer’s voice, to ask a rhetoric question; Are you addicted to Facebook?

If your response, to a rhetoric question nonetheless, is ‘What is a Facebook?’ then stop here. You can proceed to take your second cup of porridge now; it ought to have cooled off to a temperature fit for ingestion. Be sure not to hit your head on the door knob on your way out. If your response is, “Maybe yes. Maybe no. Kwegamba, I am not sure,” then let’s walk through a few more questions to see where you lie.

Do you think everything is a status update? “OMG, my boss is giving me a lecture right now now here here about my hygiene.” “hehehe I am going to the loo right now.” “I am on a boda n he is driving slowly yet am late.” “aya, they just stole my 4ne while I was on the slow boda.” That last bit you’d think but wouldn’t post it…well, because your phone would have been stolen

Do you stay up late at night trying to come up with a perfect status update?

Do you stay up late at night so you can use “Hey niggz am waide awake having fan! Team no slip” as your status update?

Do you still write the aforementioned status update even though you are tucked in bed watching re-runs of ‘Agataliko nfuufu’ that you convinced the maid to record for you?

When you eventually fall asleep, spooked by all the blood and gore you are seeing, do you wake up with a start, sweating profusely but muttering a status update?

If you stay asleep, do you dream of yourself joyfully skipping through a plush, peaceful savannah of status updates? You turn and see a clever status update. You turn again, a sheep uttering a witty comment.

You turn again, a swarm of bees with like buttons for stingers attack you and hit you with like after like.

In a few days we will throw everything off and run around the streets celebrating liberation from British rule. We will sing redemption songs and do the monkey dance. Our chests will swell with so much pride; we would have to wear extra jackets to stop ourselves from catching that chest-pride disease doctors speak about on Youtube and in sleazy videos in other places that are not Youtube. In our state of reckless abandon, we may not stop to think how some things that are part of our heritage, the UG fabric if you will, came to be. Well lucky for you, I’m fairly advanced in age and I know these things. I was there. How did boda bodas come to be?

One day, a very long time ago, Mustafa was awfully late for work and he knew without a doubt that Patel would fire him on sight. So he tried running to his workplace. He was no Kiprotich so he soon tired. He noticed Abdu riding by, whistling, on his way to work. Abdu had a goat at the back of his bike. Mustafa begged him for a lift. Abdu, a dear lover of his goat which he took everywhere with him, did not want it uncomfortable from sharing a seat with someone else.

Mustafa withdrew a portion of his life savings, which he carried around with him since there were no banks those days, and offered to pay for the ride. Abdu was unfazed. Mustafa pleaded some more. Abdu scoffed and moved to ride off into the sunrise. Mustafa pleaded even more. He then offered to teach Abdu how to dance the Macarena.

I will digress briefly to say that the Macarena was a funky dance that only the cool people knew how to do and they chose not to teach anyone else how to do it. This worked until the song’s video was released and the cool people’s iron grip on the dance was loosened.

After a lot of ado, Abdu conceded; Mustafa could come along on his bike on one condition-he carried the goat and sang for it all the way. It is because of this that early Boda boda riders carried goats and all passengers had to sing to the goat. Soon there was a scarcity of goats so riders would reluctantly let passengers come along without a goat. Eventually people started enjoying boda boda rides without goats…the goat smell remained though.